by Kyla Stone
41
On the weekends, Aunt Ellie lets us fend for ourselves for most of our meals. Aaron and I look through the cupboards, searching for some strange food combination to try. It’s more fun now that it’s a choice, and not what I have to do just to get some sort of sustenance into them. For Sunday morning breakfast, we scoop Spaghettios out of the can with a spoon. I get out the whipped cream, and the boys alternate bites of lukewarm, tomato pasta rings with mouthfuls of sugary foam.
Lucas is texting me about somewhere he wants to take me when everything goes sideways. Again. Aaron starts in with his high-pitched whining, and Frankie pushes him out of his chair. Aunt Ellie starts yelling at him over Aaron’s shrieks of wounded outrage.
“You’re out of control, young man. I’ve had quite enough!”
Frankie stares up at her scornfully. “Oh yeah? What’re you gonna do about it?”
Aunt Ellie lifts her hand, carved jade and garnet rings flashing, like she’s about to backhand him. Frankie’s eyes go wide. Aaron hiccups and watches silently from the floor.
My heart hammers against my ribs. “Aunt Ellie,” I say in the calmest voice I can muster.
She drops her hand, a mortified expression on her face. “I’m so sorry.” She flicks her gaze to the ceiling like something up there is going to rescue her from the steaming pile of crap she’s stepped into. “I can’t believe—I wouldn’t have done it.”
Frankie just glares at her.
“I would never . . .” Her voice wavers. “I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry.” She flees to her room, shutting the door with an ominous bang.
I turn to my brother. “Frankie.”
“What, Sid-ney?” But some of the fight has left his voice. “We don’t need her here. We don’t want her.”
Aaron’s lower lip trembles. Fat tears slide down his cheek. “I want Ma.”
Frankie stares down at his feet. “I want Dad.”
I shrug helplessly. “You can’t have them. And why do you want them, anyway? They were terrible people. Both of them.”
Frankie’s eyes go dark. “That’s not true!”
Hot sparks flare beneath my skin. “Frank was gone all the time, who knows where, and when he was here, he was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off!”
“Only because of you! You made him mad all the time!”
My jaw clenches. I try to rein in my words even as they bolt out of my mouth. “Frank treated Ma and the rest of us like garbage stuck to the bottom of his shoe.”
Frankie’s face reddens. “You’re a liar!”
Aaron’s gaze bounces from Frankie to me and back again.
I stride across the kitchen and grab Frankie’s shirt with both hands. “Stop it! Just stop. Or I’ll—”
Frankie stares at me, blinking furiously. Wetness glimmers at the corners of his eyes. “Or what? You’ll hit me?”
His words hit me. Hard. I uncurl my fingers from his shirt, stumble back. “No. I won’t hit you. How could you think that? We’re family.”
Frankie’s features are inscrutable. “We’re not a family.”
“Yes, we are, and we don’t hurt each other. It’s not going to be that way for us. Not anymore.”
He shakes his head, screwing up his face like he’s either going to scream or burst into tears. Instead, he runs to his room and slams the door.
I just stand there, staring after him. “I’m sorry,” I say, even though he can’t hear me. It hits me then, why Frankie and Aaron defend our parents so fiercely. Because I did it. I did my job as best I could. I taught them how to be small and silent, how to disappear into their room when the fighting started, how to recognize the warning signs, the inflection in Frank’s voice, the dark gleam in his eyes. They never saw the rest, the worst things.
Aaron comes up beside me, twines his fingers with mine. “I like not being scared.” His voice is small and soft.
They don’t know. They don’t know how bad it was. I protected them. They’ll remember Frank and Ma during the good times. They’ll have their memories, distorted, as if seen through a murky glass. I won’t be the one to tell them the truth. I will let them have this.
I squeeze his hand.
The next day, I’m headed to Chem when there’s a tug on my arm. It’s Jasmine, standing by herself, her arms crossed over her chest. Her face is pale beneath her makeup. There’s a cluster of pimples around her mouth. “Can I talk to you?”
“Aren’t you already?”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know how bad it was for you. I understand now. Why you cut. Why you were so angry all the time.”
She might as well have punched me in the gut. My stomach contracts. I flash back to all those lazy summers sprawled on her bed, my fingernails blackened with charcoal, my skin sun-kissed, hair damp from the pool, my mind drowsy and entranced as I listened to her. I hear the bray of her laugh, the melodic sound of her voice, at turns serious or excited, lecturing me on the life cycle of one of her larvae like she’d lecture an undergraduate class of future scientists. I listened like her words were a lifeline, like if I internalized them enough, I could bind them inside myself. I could know how to fly away on those butterfly wings of hers, like Icarus before he dared the heat of the sun. I shake my head. “You don’t understand anything.”
“I was a crappy friend, okay?”
“At last. We both agree on something.”
“Look—I’m trying to apologize. I’m sorry for all the stuff we—I—did to you, okay? You were trying to tell me something, back then. And I didn’t listen. Whatever it was, I didn’t listen.”
I don’t say anything. How can I? She’s saying what I needed her to say four years ago. It’s too late now. I bite my lip, trying to keep it together.
“I didn’t know what they—what Margot—was going to do at the beach. I’m sorry for that.” She shifts her feet from side to side. She grips her phone with whitened knuckles.
The bell rings. We just stare at each other. She looks uncomfortable as hell, but she’s not walking away.
“What, you want a medal or something?”
“No. I just—I’m sorry. I want—I’m asking for a truce.”
I twist my rings on my fingers. I’ve barely even thought about her in weeks. What might have been doesn’t matter anymore. Even the enmity between us, the betrayals, the treachery, the fighting and the animosity—it doesn’t matter. She made her choices. Now I can make mine. I can let her go. She’s part of my past, a bittersweet memory tacked to a display board. The only part of her I want to keep are the butterflies. “Do you still have them?”
“What?”
“Your butterflies. The ones on your walls. Do you still have them?”
Her face contorts. Suddenly she looks forlorn, almost bereft. Like she’s just realized she’s lost something important. “Not the caterpillar jars. The display plaques are stuffed in cardboard boxes on the top shelf of my mom’s closet.”
“My favorite was always the Morpho butterfly, with those iridescent, sapphire wings.”
She looks down at her boots. “Mine, too.”
“Bye, Jasmine.”
Her lip quivers ever so slightly. “Bye, Sidney.”
I turn and walk into Chemistry, leaving her standing alone in the empty hallway.
42
When I get home, Aunt Ellie is lugging her worn leather suitcase into the kitchen. She’s wearing her coat and gloves.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry, Sidney. I really am.” Her gaze connects with mine and then darts away. “It’s too much. I thought—it doesn’t matter what I thought. It’s too late. There’s no saving that one. He’ll end up just like his father. I just can’t stand around and watch it happen.”
“Wait. What’s happening?” But even before she speaks, I know. It’s written all over her face. She thought she’d whoosh in like our knight in shining armor. She thought sh
e’d rescue us like you rescue a litter of puppies at the animal shelter. But we aren’t soft, adorable puppies. We’re broken. That makes us hard in some places, sharp as splintered glass. If you want to get close to us, if you dare, you’ll get cut. You’ll bleed. She doesn’t want to bleed.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re leaving.” The light in my chest snuffs out like a candle flame.
“I’m going home. I called a taxi. I’ll wait outside. I’m sorry. Just—sorry.” She strides past me and bangs out the door, her bracelets clinking on her wrists, her purple paisley scarf fluttering behind her.
I wheel and stare at the boys who’ve crowded into the kitchen and crouched behind the table. Like they can hide from me. “What happened?”
“Frankie spit on her.”
“What?!!”
I expect Frankie to start yelling denials, but he doesn’t. “She started saying stuff about Dad again. I got so angry, I couldn’t help it.” The oversized X-men T-shirt he’s wearing makes him look younger, fragile. His eyes are scared. His fingers grip the back of the kitchen chair. “I’m sorry. I—I screwed up.”
Aaron starts to cry. “Are they gonna take us away again?”
I fight down the panic rising up my throat like acid. What now? What are we going to do? Aunt Ellie is too much like her sister. Where was she all those years when we needed her? Nowhere. We let her in. We trusted her. And now she’s just fleeing, abandoning us as surely as everyone else who’s come before her. My tongue tastes bitter. My pulse thunders in my ears.
Frankie’s face is white as a sheet of paper. “They’re going to put us in that place again.”
Aaron stares at me, pleading. “Don’t let them take us away.”
“Please, Sidney. I won’t be bad anymore. Please.” Frankie’s voice is full of dread, his eyes wide and scared. The tough veneer is gone. Frankie is just a terrified kid. And he needs me.
Who protected them, all these years? Kept them safe? Kept us together? I did. It’s always been up to me. And they’re looking to me now, desperate for me to save them. I have to save them. “That’s not going to happen. Not if I can help it.”
I spin on my heels and march outside. The cold blasts into me, but I barely feel it. The feeble porch light casts the sky in bruised shadows. Fat snowflakes drift through the air. Aunt Ellie is hunched on the bottom step of the porch, her suitcase on the ground beside her, her phone in her hands. I hurry down the steps and turn to face her. “You aren’t leaving.”
“I can’t do this. I’m so sorry.”
I shiver, stomping my feet. I feel expanded and compressed at the same time, my lungs like balloons about to burst from a tremendous, crushing pressure. “There’s no one else. You go, and those boys in there are gone. They’ll be lost. Do you understand? There’s no one else. You came in here and you promised me. You promised.”
The creases in her skin are sharp in the gritty glow from the porch light. Her eyes are wells I cannot penetrate. “I tried.”
“Trying isn’t good enough!”
“Sidney, I’m sorry.” She tugs on her left earring, a vintage pewter heart with a dangling pinecone-shaped purple jewel. Her gaze wheels up toward the sky. But there’s just the snow and the dark, no easy answers or solutions to divine from the stars. Not here. Not for us. “Whatever you think—whatever this looks like to you—I do care. I hope you know that.”
The snow melts into my socks. My feet are freezing. White vapor puffs from my mouth with every breath. “Everybody says that, but they don’t mean it. Because when the real shit hits the fan, they’re nowhere to be found.”
A pair of headlights sways down the road and swings into our driveway. Snow streaks the halos of light. Aunt Ellie stands up. She grabs the handle of her suitcase and starts walking.
My eyelashes crust with frost. I’m shivering so hard it’s difficult to speak clearly. “Ma gave up,” I say to her back. “She gave up every damn day. Whenever it was hard, she just gave up.”
She stops. “I—I don’t have a choice.”
The driver rolls down his window. “Lady, you coming or not? It’s like minus 20 degrees out here.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You always have a choice.”
“I don’t know how to do this.”
“Frankie’s got some sharp edges, I know.” My words tumble over themselves, tripping up my tongue. I can’t get them out fast enough. “He’s broken. We’re all broken, but we can heal.”
“We need you.” My lungs burn for air. I will literally do anything to keep her here, to keep the boys safe. “Please.”
Finally, she turns back around. “You don’t understand. I always run. I ran out on three husbands. Would’ve run on the fourth, if he hadn’t gotten himself killed. I thought I could be different. I thought this was a chance to make up for—” She stops, shakes her head. “I run. That’s what I do.”
“Not anymore. You left your whole life to come here and be with us. That’s not nothing. It’s huge. To us, to those boys in there. It’s everything.”
“I know that,” she says in a soft voice. “I know.”
The driver honks his horn.
“We need you.” My heart slams against my ribs. Everything is cracking open—my skull, my skeleton, my organs, my chest collapsing in on itself. “There are things I need to tell you. Things you should know. Why I—why I can’t see Mom.”
She looks at me through the falling snow.
“I’m ready, now. But I need help. I can’t do it all alone. I need you.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” I say without a moment’s hesitation. “I know I don’t always act like it, but I do. You’re family.”
Shadows pass across her face, warring emotions I mostly recognize, like regret, fear, shame. Then others, grief tangled with something else, something I don’t yet dare to believe. “We need to talk,” she says slowly.
“Yes. We need to talk. I know that. I’m ready.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” I echo. Please, please, I pray to whatever entity is up there.
“You can be very convincing, you know that?”
I barely dare to breathe. “So I’ve been told. It must be my sweet and amiable demeanor.”
She snorts. One corner of her mouth twitches.
“I’m also freezing my ass off.”
“Language, missy.”
I take a shaky breath. “Please come back inside.”
Finally, she nods. “We’re making ground rules. And everybody goes to therapy. Even me.”
Relief flushes through me. My whole body is weak with it. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And that trailer? It’s got to go.”
Now that’s something we can both agree on.
Aunt Ellie pays the taxi and we go back inside. The boys are silent. They follow me to the couch and we sit down and look up at Aunt Ellie, waiting for whatever’s going to happen. Her gaze sweeps toward the ceiling. She takes a breath. “I’m no good at this,” she begins slowly.
And so we talk. Frankie sits next to me. I know better than to grab his hand, but I press my shoulder into his, like Lucas did with me at the hospital. After a minute, Frankie’s taut body softens. I think he gets it, finally. We all have to change. We all have to make concessions, to conform to the shape our new lives have taken. This, right here, all of us together in this room, this is a good thing.
This is family. This is what we fight for.
43
After school on Wednesday, I go see Bill for the first time since it happened. It’s already mid-January. There’s no way I have a job waiting for me after all this time, but I want to say something to Bill, to say goodbye and thanks in a way that’s real.
When I walk in a little after four, the place is nearly dead. There’s a sad tabletop tinsel-covered tree on top of the bar, left over holiday cheer. A family with three tow-headed toddlers sit in a booth in the back and a couple of truckers sip coffee over newspapers. Brianna gives m
e a wave.
I head straight for the kitchen. I breathe in the familiar, comforting smell of grease and oil, fries and onions. Bill’s flipping a burger that doesn’t look like a burger. It’s a round piece of cardboard, or maybe dog food mashed into a hamburger shape.
Bill’s face stretches into a wide grin when he sees me. His dreadlocks fall around his shoulders, and he’s shaved his beard. “Look what this place’s come to. We added a veggie burger to the menu to please all the crazy vegans. Veggie burger. That’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.” He puts down his spatula and wraps me in an awkward shoulder hug.
“It looks disgusting.”
“I’m sure it is. Been too revolted to actually try it yet. Just the smell turns my appetite.”
“I know I haven’t been in to work in, like, months.”
He waves his arm. “It hasn’t been too busy, unfortunately. We can use you whenever you’re ready. But if you’re not, we’ll wait.”
My mouth falls open. “Really?”
“Really. I’ve missed you, kid.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“Always with the sarcasm. How’s your Ma?”
“They sentenced her to thirty years,” I say, my voice raw. Speaking the words out loud makes my stomach twist with guilt. My stomach hurts all the time, now. “Her lawyer says she’ll get out sooner, but who knows.”
He shakes his head. “Such a shame. Speaking of, do you have a minute? I wanted to talk to you, after your dad—after what happened. It didn’t seem right over the phone.”
“Okay.”
He glances around, makes sure we’re alone in the back. “I’ve always had a soft spot for you, kid. I hope you know that. I’ve always felt like I could look out for you, if you worked here. But I fear I’ve failed.”
My throat tightens. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know what you think about what happened. I hope you don’t hate your mother for it. Frank has—had—this charming, gregarious personality when he was out in public. I used to be envious of how good he was with the ladies. It was no effort for him. But there was another side to him, a side most people never saw. I never really saw it myself, either. It was like hints of something, some darkness in him, but it would pass so quickly, I would wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing. He got in fights, could turn on a frat brother or a player on the field in a flash. Are you following me? Do you want me to stop?”